Description

L: 21 - 26 cm

The Southern Grey Shrike is mainly light grey and white, with a black eye mask and hooked black beak. The wings are black with a fairly small white patch.
It is slightly smaller and darker than the Great Grey Shrike. It was formerly regarded as being conspecific with that species.

It is resident in southern Europe, north Africa and the Canary Islands.

Unlike the Great Grey Shrike, it prefers dry open country.

Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches, and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder".